Nigeria Pushes Pan-African Digital Growth as Startups Dream Big

Casablanca – Nigeria is pushing to position itself at the center of Africa’s fast-growing startup scene, with a clear focus on scale, cross-border collaboration, and building digital infrastructure that actually connects the continent.

Speaking on the sidelines of GITEX Africa 2026 in Marrakech, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, Director General of National Information Technology Development Agency and Nigeria’s Chief Information Technology Officer, told Morocco World News (MWN) the conversation around tech in Africa is shifting.

“Before, we were talking about adoption. Today, we are talking about building our digital future,” Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi said.

That shift is showing up in how countries like Nigeria are approaching major tech platforms. This year, Nigeria moved away from a centralized national pavilion and instead dispersed its startups across the exhibition floor, placing them alongside companies from around the world.

Abdullahi said the decision was deliberate. “We want them to network with other startups from other parts of the world,” he told MWN. “Anybody there is intentionally looking to connect or looking for innovative solutions.”

The result, he said, is stronger engagement. Startups are having more direct conversations, building connections that go beyond national branding. It also pushes founders to operate more independently.

“It’s not just about the government bringing startups,” he detailed. “Let them have skin in the game so that they can value what the government is doing as well.”

Nigeria brought a smaller group this year, around 10 startups, but most are already active beyond the domestic market. This reflects a broader trend in the country’s tech ecosystem, which Abdullahi described as one of the strongest on the continent.

Many Nigerian startups begin by solving local problems. But the goal is always expansion.

“You build something maybe for your local market,” he said, “but when it works, you can elevate it to national, regional, or global.”

This model has already produced results, with several Nigerian startups scaling across Africa and beyond. For Abdullahi, platforms like GITEX are important because they create the environment where those ideas can grow.

“Innovation doesn’t happen in isolation,” he explained. “When people come together, share ideas, share experience, that gives birth to innovation.”

Beyond startups, the bigger challenge is infrastructure. Abdullahi pointed to the lack of direct digital connections between African countries, which still forces data and transactions to pass through regions outside the continent.

For him, fixing that is a priority. Nigeria is pushing for what he described as “digital super highways” to link African economies more efficiently. The goal is to allow services like fintech, e-commerce, agritech, and edtech to move across borders as easily as goods.

Frameworks like the African Continental Free Trade Area and the Smart Africa Trust Alliance are part of that effort, aiming to standardize digital trade and improve data exchange across countries.

At the national level, Nigeria is also leaning into digital transformation as a core economic strategy. Abdullahi said the government is working to create the legal and institutional environment needed for startups to grow, with a focus on innovation and diversification.

Still, he stressed that the government alone cannot drive the ecosystem. “The government is creating the enabling environment,” he told MWN. “But the private sector drives everything.”

Nigeria has also worked to expand access to global platforms like GITEX by bringing the event closer to home. After years of sending delegations abroad, the country launched its own edition, drawing more than 13,000 participants in its first year.

Startups across Africa are no longer just building for their own markets, he suggested, arguing that they are shifting focus to building for the continent — and increasingly for the world.

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